A few weeks ago I wrote about the lasting influence of my mom making space and time for things she loved when I was a kid — a bit of modeling I’m so grateful for now, as I take stock of the relationships and pursuits that mean the most to me in midlife.

I also asked readers for stories of the people who shaped them. So many poured in that I ran out of room in that first column. Today I’m sharing a few more.

As I read them and repeat them here, I’m reminded of a couple things. First, if you get a chance over the next few weeks to ask someone in your life to talk about a person who shaped them, I hope you take it. This has been such a beautiful glimpse into the human experience in all of its layers and sorrows and joys.

Second, nothing in the world matters as much as giving someone your time and your kindness and your unwavering belief that they’re worthy of both.

“I’m grateful for my ninth-grade English teacher, Mr. Farber,” Michelle Icard wrote. “I went into high school really unsure of who I was. Our first assignment was to write a short story about our childhood. The paper came back with so many red marks I didn’t even want to look at it. But on the top he had also written, ‘A-. You are a writer.’ It felt so good to have someone tell me what I was instead of always worrying about what I wasn’t.”

It’s worth noting that Icard went on to become a highly successful author.

“My husband Tom had an incurable autoimmune disease, systemic scleroderma,” Sandra Steinbrecher wrote. “As the disease progressed, and especially in the last year, each time he was hospitalized, it seemed like I had to fight for everything. It was rough.”

Their younger son, Otto, was in high school at the time, which left Steinbrecher struggling with, in addition to everything else, the need to be in two places at once.

“One night I was leaving the hospital to get home, with my usual sense of heavy heartedness at leaving Tom and anxiousness about getting back to Otto,” she wrote. “I was heading out the door, and a hospital staff person was coming in to tidy up and empty the garbage. As I looked up, she said, ‘How are you doing?’ Like she meant it. I was not prepared for someone to be thoughtful or kind or ask how I was doing. And it was the person who had the least social or professional status. Her kindness and humanity cut through and I burst into tears.”

Brian Hamilton was a shy and reclusive kid, preferring to spend summers inside reading while other kids played outside.

“My parents were not the encouraging type and they were quite happy having a son whose nose was always in a book,” Hamilton wrote. “Then one day, my paternal grandmother, Iva Pearl Hamilton, challenged me to come out of my shell. ‘I want you to become a public speaker,’ she said.”

He was horrified at the thought. But every Sunday afternoon they practiced a seven-minute speech called “The Twentieth Century Belongs to Canada” for two hours. Eventually, his grandmother, herself a frequent public speaker, entered Hamilton into a speaking contest sponsored by the Canadian Legion. He placed first.

“I often think of my grandmother even though she left us many years ago,” Hamilton wrote. “She saw something in me that I could not see in myself.”

Lori Beth credits her Evanston Township High School combined studies teacher, the late Dean Hanebuth, for her a love of reading.

“In the 1970s he saw something in me where most other teachers just dismissed this long-haired, quiet, unsmiling 14-year-old,” she wrote. “He engaged my interest in Shakespeare, so for my homework, I wrote an entire play in the style of Shakespeare. While I was barely passing my other classes, I was an A+ student in CS and fell in love with literature and poetry. I entered college as an English major and learned to think critically and to express myself in writing. I had the chance to email him about 10 years ago to let him know that he reset the trajectory of my life from academic failure to a passion for reading.”

When she was 10, Linda Mayes visited her grandparents in Pittsburgh by herself for a few weeks in the summer.

“I went to work with my grandpa, who bought, sold and delivered used house trailers,” Mayes wrote. “In other periods of his life he was a manager of a Kroger store, a butcher, a taxi driver. I think he ran a mini-golf course, and who knows what else.”

Into his 80s, Mayes wrote, he was an avid food pantry volunteer and the first to lend a helping hand.

Anyway, that 10-year-old summer: One day Mayes and her grandpa stopped for lunch at a diner, and Mayes heard some course language she wasn’t accustomed to.

“When I asked him about it, he said, ‘Some people just aren't smart enough to use nice words,’” Mayes wrote. “It makes me sad that so often these days I am tempted to throw F-bombs, because that's what seems normal now. But I know Grandpa Pete wouldn't like it, so I (usually) don't.”

Meredith Lindgren met her husband, Bruce, when they were both engineering students at Purdue University. They married during their senior year.

“I often felt invisible,” Lindgren wrote, “but Bruce always saw me.”

After they raised three children together, Bruce was diagnosed with ALS. Lindgren spent 5½ years taking care of him as the disease ravaged his body. He died seven years ago.

“His mantra when he was diagnosed was that he could make each day his worst day or his best day, and he chose to make each day his best,” she wrote. “I find strength in remembering his strength.”

And here I am out of room again. Thank you to everyone who shared their stories, which are now pages in my eternally updating guidebook for life.

©2025 Tribune News Service. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.